Shell Prompt Line Wrapping Issue

user_41908 0
Viewed 30753

I've done something to break my Bash Shell Prompt in OS X (10.5.7) Terminal.

This is the PS1 that I had configured:

PS1='\[\e[1;32m\]\h\[\e[0m\]:\[\e[1;34m\]\w\[\e[0m\]\$ '

As far as I can tell I have the color commands escaping correctly. However when I scroll up and down in my command history I often get line wrapping issues if the historic commands wrap onto multiple lines.

I simplified my prompts to the following:

PS1='\[\e[1m\]\h:\w\$ \[\e[0m\]'
PS2='> '

And I still see something like:

localhost:~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/knpmxpup.Defau
lt/extensions/{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}$ expocd \{1A2D0EC4-7
5F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E                                           export PS1="\[
\e[1;32m\]\h\[\e[0m\]:                                          cd Library/Appl
ication\ Support/

I've also tried \033 instead of \e. I just included PS2 up there for information, I haven't changed that from the install default. If I completely remove the color codes then everything works fine, any ideas?

prompt ansi-escape colors bash
9 Answers

Line wrapping issues in Bash are nothing new. Your PS1 should work as is but there is a bug in Bash 3.2.49. Consult the mailing list, there's yet another bug regarding this which was confirmed to be fixed in 4.0.

You can't do much more than tagging unprintable characters with \[ and \], the rest must be done by the prompting code.

user_1041620

It seems that you have correctly escaped and enclosed sequences.

A workaround I use anyway it it to add a '\n' at the end. I find it clearer and lessen any problem with wrapping issues. The exact end of my PS1 is :

'\n\[\033[0;30m\]$\[\033[0m\]

An excellent howto you probably know :

Bash prompt howto

user_1355490
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